


Whispers

by redredribbons



Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Depression, Early Stages of Attraction, Other, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 21:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15446595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redredribbons/pseuds/redredribbons
Summary: In a moment of weakness the Symbiote tries to leave Eddie for its previous host, and they're both forced to reckon with the emotional fallout. Slight AU after the events of Spider-Man 317.





	Whispers

Sunlight spilled in through the bars covering the narrow, ground-level window of Eddie’s basement apartment. Eddie was still awake, just as he had been for the last three days since the Seacrest incident. He’d abandoned the sweaty tangle of sheets hours earlier and sat on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing. A rickety fan whirred feebly in one corner. The stuffy air should have been uncomfortable: the latest item in a long list of things Eddie should have cared about. He should take a shower. He should put on clothes. He should drag himself down to the temp agency, see if he could pick up any odd jobs for the day. He should scrounge up some change for food. The “shoulds” droned together into white noise. Eddie had given up trying to convince himself that any of it mattered. Even the warrant out for his arrest seemed irrelevant. Prison offered regular meals, at least. Distantly, Eddie knew he should have been furious about the debacle at Seacrest that had led to the warrant in the first place. He _wanted_ to be furious. Rage was a comforting blanket that kept his heart in and his demons out. But all he felt was emptiness, just like the night in the church when he nearly ended his own life.

 

When he begged for forgiveness that night, the only answer he received was the power and strange tenderness from the living void he’d come to think of as his other. Its shapeless form poured into him and filled all the places hollowed out by pain and guilt. When they fused it hugged his skin closer than a human embrace ever could. Its emotions wove through his own like intertwined fingers. The intimacy was terrifying, then addictive, then it was part of him. He couldn’t imagine life without his other any more than he could imagine life without breath in his lungs. 

 

Now Eddie was suffocating. The creature had been silent and distant since Seacrest, where it tried to leave him. For Peter Parker of all people. Eddie could at least appreciate the poetic irony there. And the more he thought about it, the more irritated he grew at himself for being _surprised_ by that turn of events. Wherever the mythical goalposts that defined “good enough” stood, Eddie had never been able to reach them. Not for his father, not for his wife, and now, not for... whatever this was, with the Symbiote. The nature of their relationship was undefinable, beyond the grasp of human words. The Symbiote was so wildly alien that Eddie almost hadn’t thought of it as a person at first. But watching it throw itself at Parker hadn’t felt like security escorting him out of the Daily Globe office, or his first overdraft notice, or dumping his few remaining possessions on the counter of a seedy pawn shop. It felt like seeing the tears in Anne’s eyes when she told him they couldn’t go on like this. It felt like the empty bed on the night she left. 

 

Eddie slumped forward, elbows on knees, and dug his hands into his stinging eyes. He wished he’d had the courage to pull the trigger in the church. Selling his gun for cash to make rent had been a mistake. There were the butter knives in the kitchen, and his disposable razor, but those blades were too dull and flimsy to cut deep enough. The bed sheets could suffice if he could figure out a way to attach them securely enough to the ceiling. There were buildings, bridges, busy streets-- all of which involved going outside and being seen, possibly confronted, by other people. Thinking of oblivion was comforting, but the logistics to get there felt impossible. 

 

Something warm and wet dripped onto Eddie’s thigh. His body jerked in surprise, and found himself eye to milky gel-like eye with the Symbiote. Eddie froze, staring, simultaneously confused and fascinated. While the creature used to speak to him often, he still wasn’t accustomed to seeing it materialize as a distinct being. It coiled on the bed next to him, close enough to graze his skin when its amorphous form swirled and shifted. Beads of saliva oozed down the tip of its long tongue. The crescent of fangs that formed its mouth was classic nightmare material, but the clench in Eddie’s stomach, the racing of his heart, didn’t quite feel like fear. A thousand questions and emotions surged through him, none of which he could pronounce. 

 

“Don’t,” the Symbiote spoke in dry, rustling hiss. 

 

“What are you talking about?” Eddie snapped.

 

“You were thinking about dying,” the Symbiote said, “Don’t.”

 

“And how exactly the hell do you know what I’m thinking about?” Eddie retorted. 

 

“Can’t avoid it. Your emotions are loud. And sour. And they hurt,” the creature said.

 

“How about you just-- I don’t know-- ignore me? Turn it off?” Eddie said. 

 

“Not how this works. We can’t form effective bonds with our hosts if we close ourselves off,”the Symbiote said. 

 

Eddie didn’t fully understand and, in that moment, didn’t care to. He felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with his exposed skin. It set his teeth on edge. “Then _ignore me_! Why do you have to sit there and act like you know anything about me? Or pretend that you even care?”

 

There was a spark of answering fury from the Symbiote. As Eddie studied its gaping maw, he wondered how difficult it would be provoke. Those razor sharp fangs would slice his flesh apart like saw blades. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the quickest death, depending on where the bites landed, but Eddie had no doubt it would effective. 

 

“I won’t,” the Symbiote said. 

 

“You won’t what? And you didn’t answer...” Eddie trailed off as it dawned on him that the Symbiote had responded to his thoughts instead of his words.

 

“I won’t hurt you. I need you,” the Symbiote said. Anxiety prickled at the edges of Eddie’s mind, and it took him a moment to realize that the feeling wasn’t his own. 

 

“Well you _did_ ,” Eddie snarled, “And that’s a bunch of bullshit. You don’t want me at all. The second you saw a chance to leave? You took it. If we weren’t bonded you would have left me and I would have been--” 

 

His voice broke. He turned away from the Symbiote and covered his face with his hands. 

 

“It was a mistake. A bad mistake,” the Symbiote said. 

 

Something like a wail pierced into Eddie’s psyche, low and plaintive, fueling the pressure behind his eyes. Eddie had spent his life building walls, compartmentalizing, shutting things and people out. He never planned for someone else to be trapped inside with him.

 

“A mistake. Right,” Eddie rasped, “After everything Parker did to you-- to _us_ \-- you’d still go back to him if you could.”

 

“Wouldn’t go back! Wouldn’t leave you!” the Symbiote was frantic. Eddie could feel it writhing beside him. “For just an instant I wanted something... I shouldn’t want. I wanted something bad. That would hurt me. You know what it’s like.”

 

The last statement wasn’t a question or accusation. Eddie _did_ know. The Symbiote had seen it. 

 

“Then why--” Eddie tried to slow his breathing. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why wouldn’t you talk to me?” 

 

For a long time there were no words. There was only a maelstrom of terror and desperation and loneliness.

 

“Thought you would get rid of me,” the Symbiote finally replied. It sounded very small and far away. “Like he did.”

 

“God, without you I’m--” Eddie couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence. 

 

An impossibly smooth caress brushed along his upper arm. Though the Symbiote covered every pore of his skin when they fused, it had never touched him like this before. So gentle, almost timid. Eddie peeled his damp palms away from his eyes so he could watch an inky tentacle wrap around his bicep. That whisper of a touch sent goosebumps across his skin. 

 

“I can’t be without you,” Eddie barely exhaled his confession. “I could never send you away.”

 

More tentacles curled over his shoulder and around his side. They were soft and cool and held firm as Eddie listed against them. 

 

“That’s why I need _you_ , Eddie. My kind... we can’t survive alone. Without hosts,” the Symbiote said. Its tentacles trembled ever so slightly around Eddie’s torso. “You understand this.”

 

“Then we can be okay. We can be okay,” Eddie repeated like a prayer. 

 

“Yes. Together,” the Symbiote murmured. 

 

The tempest of emotions calmed to a vast sea. Eddie sank into its many-limbed embrace, content to lose himself where his own cruel thoughts couldn’t find him. There was nothing but the quiet reverberation of alien consciousness, and they were whole. 

**Author's Note:**

> I always complain about how much Eddie is made to suffer in canon, so my solution for that is to... write fan fic where he's suffering, apparently.


End file.
